improve

To Improve the Prototype is the 6th and final step in the Design Process.

With the exception of Project 4, students were expected to reflect on their process and determine future moves to strengthen their artifact’s rhetorical impact using the feedback given in Project Builder 2, in the Testing phase (or step 5). This meant that Projects 1-3 did not necessarily move through full-scale revisions for a final iteration to be assessed. Instead, using the Design-Focused Approach that framed the writing process through a series of Design Journals and Project Builders, students repeatedly reflected on and planned for their projects to effectively engage audiences. Repeated thinking and planning did the operational work of composition and qualified the Design-Focused Approach as recursive. It is important to note that the DFA sought to emphasize the recursive nature of writing and that in turn meant that the Design Journal and Project Builder scaffold had to be flexible. The expectations articulated on the project builders from P1 to P4 evolved with the needs of the student writers. By the time students were in the final phases of designing their projects, the needs of the project could not always be predicted and had to remain subject to change. Final stages of the writing were speculative in nature and the projects were assessed based on that moment in time.

 

When students tested their ideas by pitching their purpose, design and main points via the artist’s statement, students were looking at their projects through their own lens. What were they trying to achieve with their project? However, in the 5th Design Journal, when they reflected on the project’s successes and failures, they assumed the perspective of their audience. How had their intentions been received? Were there elements of the project to edit to have a greater effect? The intention of Design Journal 5 was for students to think about the feedback and suggestions they received so that they could return to the drawing board and make appropriate plans. Students would get more value from gathering a sense of the elements that affected their audience. Actualizing the revisions held less importance as sometimes writers simply adopt edits without question. They fail to think about the rhetorical value each individual change holds.

 

Although some may view the work as redundant, this work was in fact distinct from the reflective work students would perform in the final Project Builder (PB-3), Students were asked to examine suggested edits. The students could complete the project builder one of two ways: 1) directly annotate a few places within the artifact with their reactions and plans for suggested edits or 2) write a brief paragraph explaining what the student planned to do with suggested edits. In other words, what might a reader expect to see in the next iteration of the project? What improvements would be made and for what reason? Spending the time to properly digest feedback was critical to the development of students as effective writers. Making determinations about what the student writer thought best in comparison to what their audiences suggested was a culminating task to support student’s rhetorical decision making moving forward in other projects or even other coursework.

 

However, due to the constraints of time the class and semester schedule, students did not always complete Project Builder 3 for assessment or credit. 

Project Builder 3

More On Project Builder Scaffold

Design Journal 5

More On Design Journal Scaffold